The widespread usage of motor vehicles for both personal and work related activities places millions of vehicles on roads each day with their operation being largely unmonitored. Unmonitored vehicle operation can lead to issues including, for example, abusive use of the vehicle and lack of experience. With more young drivers getting licenses each year, there has been an unfortunate increase in accidents along with the ensuing damage, debilitating injuries and sometimes death. Most of these accidents are attributable to speeding and generally poor driving habits.
FIG. 1 illustrates a graphical representation 100 that depicts the actual deaths in passenger vehicles by age provided by National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA). The curve 110 represents the death rate associated with male drivers and the curve 120 represents the death rate of female drivers. From the graph 100, it is clear that the distribution of age related deaths is bi-modal, and clearly depicts the relationship between youth and auto fatality. Current data indicates that the offering of a driver education course result in a great increase in the number of young licensed drivers without any decrease in the rate of fatal and serious crash involvement. Although such driver's education programs do teach safety skills, students are not motivated to utilize them and they actually foster overconfidence and do not fully consider safety issues.
The factors that have been researched and proven as the leading contributors to accidents, injuries and fatalities among teens includes lack of driving experience, inadequate driving skills, risk-taking behavior, poor judgment and decision making, distraction and lack of focus. As a result of these factors, a higher proportion of teens are responsible for fatal crashes because of driving errors as evidenced by a larger percentage of crashes of single vehicles, a larger percentage of crashes involving speed, a larger percentage of crashes involving other passengers.
Based on the foregoing it is believed that a need exists for an improved driver authentication system and method for monitoring and controlling vehicle usage by a high-risk driver. A need also exists for an improved method for identifying and authenticating the driver and programming the vehicle operating parameters that trigger control and driver feedback intervention, as described in greater detail herein.